Haven: William Review

Just when you thought that things in Haven couldn’t change any more over the course of one hour, we have another one that results in us questioning almost everything that we thought that we knew heading into this episode. I guess that makes it just another week in coastal Maine.

Spoiler Alert: Of course there are spoilers. You know that by now.

This week’s action picks up from the gun shot that ended last week’s episode. No, Audrey didn’t shoot Nathan. Of course she didn’t. We all knew that Nathan was going to come out the other side of this fine. What Audrey was shooting at was Kurrgan (that big brutish fella from the Bar[n]) who somehow broke into Audrey’s apartment for no particular reason.

The panic from the gunshot causes everyone to panic and reveal Audrey’s true identity (as in she’s not Lexi) to Vince. He wasn’t exactly thrilled that everyone had lied about Audrey being Audrey but admits that they accidentally but successfully saved the town from certain doom. You know when someone says that, things tend to get a lot worse for everyone. Fortunately for the Brothers Teagues, they got the rest of the night off.

Instead, it was Dwight who was worst off as he got clubbed over the head with a baseball bat and captured by the Barn duo. This led to our first Edge moment of the series, though. Dwight channeled Edge and headbutted Crazy Hair when he got too close, broke the chair he was tied in and unleashed his trademark spear on Kurrgan. It wasn’t really an escape attempt but a move to dial Nathan so he could be traced to by the super best friends for a rescue.

Naturally, the gang arrives on the scene to save the day (led by Duke’s knowledge of local underground poker spots) but saving Dwight wasn’t really the interesting part of the visit. Tucked away in the back was William. Lexi’s friend from the bar is back and suffering a massive case of amnesia.

Back at the station, while Audrey is talking to William, Dwight is interrogating Crazy Hair. It turns out that he has a crazy Trouble. As in, he can make other people crazy and delusional and did that to Dwight when he got too close to Crazy Hair. This caused Dwight to obsess over all the missing Troubled people in town and convince himself that Duke is a homicidal maniac. The same trick gets pulled on Nathan who is convinced that William is stealing Audrey away from him. And Kurrgan also pulls the same trick on Jen who then thinks that Duke’s two-timing her with Audrey.

This week’s Trouble of the Week, doesn’t affect Audrey (obviously), William and Duke but that doesn’t mean that they don’t all put in some interesting performances. Eric Balfour comes off so creepy in Dwight’s delusions of Duke being a crazed killer and perfectly slappable when mocking Jen for her insanity in her delusions (and she does slap him). Bonus points to Edge for channeling Edge when acting crazy. His mad obsession with proving that Duke was a killer certainly drew on incensed in-ring Edge. It basically looked like when Edge used to crouch and wave an opponent up for a spear. I loved Adam’s performance this week.

Anyway, the crazy Trouble isn’t just a whisper in the victim’s ear or touching the Barn duo. When autopsying another local dead person who went crazy, Haven ME Gloria (who was splitting her time ME-ing with playing games on her iPhone and is just killing it with her weekly appearances) found a small black sphere in that person’s brain. Turns out every person acting crazy that showed up in the morgue that day had the same black sphere inside. As interesting as that seems, it isn’t nearly as creepy as the Ceti eels from Wrath of Khan. Now, if they did this episode during SyFy’s 31 Days of Halloween, they could have tried something freaky like that.

While all this is going on, William and Audrey are trying to solve matters themselves. It turns out that William’s amnesia is partially cured by a spark with Audrey. I mean a literal spark too. When the two come in close contact, there’s an actual spark between the two. I’ve heard of a spark between two people (or characters) but I didn’t actually think I’d ever see that translated to screen. Anyway, William remembers where he first dropped into Haven and reckons that must be where the mysterious box the Barn duo are looking for is.

So the two get to the Haven Lookout and find the box. Thinking it’ll solve the Trouble of the Week, Audrey wants to take it back to her friends. Except William has other plans. See, he was goldbricking this whole time. The Trouble was caused by him and this box. He’s been the one turbocharging people’s Troubles with that box. It was all to get Audrey back. Well, not Audrey but another incarnation that was in love with William and whom William still loves.

The episode ends with William trying to kiss Audrey (I think that’s what he was trying to do) but he electrified her with that literal sparking thing from before which caused Audrey to black out. Nathan finds her as she comes to and assures her that everything is alright. The musical sting at the end of the episode assures us that it’s nowhere close to being alright.

Overall, I liked the acting in this episode even if I didn’t think that William’s story was all that interesting. Eric Balfour and Edge both put in spectacular performances from either side of the crazy Trouble. And Adam Copeland going full Edge was a highlight. I’m such a mark.

I’m still a bit interested to see where the Audrey/William romance will go. (I have a theory about that below.) But just because I’m interested in how it plays out doesn’t mean that I find it compelling yet. There just doesn’t seem to be anything at stake. Supercharging Troubles doesn’t seem to serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things. Unless William is willing to destroy Haven to bring he and Audrey together, I’m not sure what is in store to make this story compelling. At least Colin Ferguson did well with the material he was given.

Other random points of note:

SPEAR! SPEAR! BY GOD EDGE JUST BROKE KURRGAN IN HALF WITH THAT DEVASTATING SPEAR! Yes, I finally got my wish of Edge busting out some wrestling moves on the show with the spear on Kurrgan! Awesomeballs.

I love how many “gas leaks” that Haven has and people just keep going along with it. I just have to assume that everyone in town is sort of willfully ignorant. They must know that “gas leak” means whatever just happened was caused by a Trouble and that they pretend that they don’t know that so they just go about their day normally.

Does anyone want my theory about how the season will end? I’ve written it following this sentence in white so it shouldn’t be readable on the site (no guarantee about how it shows up on the RSS) so highlight to read. Since we’ve been going on about Audrey needing to kill her true love to end the Troubles and William is in love with some other Audrey incarnation, it’s killing William that ends the Troubles. I know that the Brothers Teagues are convinced that killing Nathan was the right answer but what if the Trouble ender was never about Nathan? End theory.

Next week, we go to a Haven where everything is different. It’s our second straight season with a sort of alternate reality episode. Last year, the brief alternate reality episode mixed in with the time travel episode. This season, it looks like a straight alternate reality in which the Troubles no longer exist, Duke is a third-generation Haven PD officer instead of Nathan and Vince is dressed like the Third Doctor. And where is Nathan in next week’s preview? I suppose that’ll be answered next week.

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About Steve Murray

Steve is the founder and editor of The Lowdown Blog and et geekera. On The Lowdown Blog, he often writes about motorsports, hockey, politics and pop culture. Over on et geekera, Steve writes about geek interests and lifestyle.
Steve is on Twitter at @TheSteveMurray.